It is often desirable to section off portions of the workplace that may contain dangerous equipment, expensive equipment, or sensitive equipment that is easily damaged. Protective barriers and enclosures are also used to section off portions of a work space that may expose the individual to unusual or unexpected dangers, such as high electrical voltage, liquefied gasses, and radiation. It is desirable that the partitions for sectioning off protected areas be attractive in appearance, easy to assemble, rigid, and difficult to compromise.
An important part of such partitions is the provision of a gate allowing access to and from the protected area, and a lock for locking the gate. The lock must have sufficient strength such that it will not fail when subjected to tampering or brute force. The lock assembly must also have a sufficiently long life expectancy to survive for many years.
Locksets are generally either a hook latch, in which a hook is extended from the mortise as the latch is operated with the hook engaging a bar on a receiver. Such hook latches are particularly desirable for sliding doors and gates where the hook retains the sliding member from being withdrawn from the receiver. Alternately, a lockset may include a slam latch, such as a deadbolt in which an elongate member extends from the mortise and is received in a transverse opening in the receiver. Such slam latches are particularly desirable for swinging doors and gates in which the transverse opening retains the slam latch, or deadbolt, to prevent the gate or door from swinging.
Hook lock mortises having the physical strength to retain such gates are readily available in the art; however, such locks must be mounted in an enclosure that mates with a suitable latch plate so that the lock will withstand outside contaminants, tampering, and brute force to which such locks are inevitably subjected. Accordingly, there is a need for an enclosure a suitable latch plate for use with a hook lock.